There is a place in the canals of Xochimilco, on the southern edge of Mexico City, where the trees bear dolls. Hundreds of them, sun-bleached, limbless, eyeless, wired to branches and fence posts on a small island known as Isla de las Muñecas. The story most often told is that a hermit named Julián Santana Barrera spent decades hanging them there to placate the spirit of a girl said to have drowned nearby; whether she ever existed is part of the legend. Visitors still bring new dolls. Where Dolls Hang, the next game from the one-person outfit Steelkrill Studio, starts from that image and asks what it would feel like to row toward it alone.

The trailer, which premiered on IGN, makes the approach the hook: a lantern on the bow of a small boat, fog over flat water, shapes swaying from a dead tree. Steelkrill is careful to say the story is fiction, an original mystery built on Mexican folklore rather than a retelling of the island’s history. But the atmosphere is borrowed straight from the real place, and that borrowing is the most interesting idea in the project.

A slumped figure on a park bench in a misty forest, dolls hanging from the branches above, in Where Dolls Hang — Image: Steelkrill Studio

Several of the dolls and objects in the game were modelled in 3D from real photographs, and some of those photographs are hidden in the game world. The design intent is a kind of delayed recognition: you meet something grotesque in a dark room, and only later find the snapshot that proves it existed. In the announcement, the studio frames this as blurring the boundary between fiction and reality. The game’s Steam page goes further, warning players that it contains real photographs and disturbing VHS footage.

That found-footage instinct runs through the rest of the design. Set in 1998, the game sends you into the island’s forests and buildings with a camcorder to record evidence, solve puzzles and work out why dolls and mannequins have been washing ashore. Scattered VHS tapes hold real classic films such as Night of the Living Dead, and they play on the televisions in the house. The studio’s only caveat is that whatever lives there will not necessarily wait for the credits.

Baby dolls and a tall mannequin stand in a dark, cobwebbed nursery in Where Dolls Hang — Image: Steelkrill Studio

It is familiar ground for Steelkrill. The studio made its name with The Backrooms 1998, a found-footage survival horror game that left Steam Early Access in February 2025, three years after its debut, before reaching consoles; The Voidness and The 18th Attic followed the same atmospheric line. Where Dolls Hang reads as a step from internet-born mythology toward a real place with a real history, which raises the stakes on how carefully that place is treated.

There is no release date yet. Where Dolls Hang is coming to PC through Steam, and from November 6 to 8 it has its own immersive digital booth at ENDIX Expo 2026. The island has drawn the curious for decades. The open question is whether a game can turn that pull into dread rather than a tourist’s thrill.

Tags: indie games, Horror games, ENDIX Expo, Isla de las Muñecas, Steelkrill Studio, The Backrooms 1998

Where Dolls Hang turns Mexico’s Island of the Dolls into a horror game built from real photos

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